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#HRx II

Moldbug, by laying an immense foundation, was complex enough to be interpreted in very distinct manners. NRx concentrates on his economic writings and proposed solutions: stockholder sovereigns, Patchwork, block-chain protocols, exit, financial incentives, Austrianism, [Bitcoin], ‘the reset’. Alternatively, HRx concentrates on his reading suggestions and historical/international writings: Carly[l]e worship, high-Toryism/Jacobitism, classical international law, Absolute monarchy, generalist historiography, imperialism apologia, political theory, and the general aesthetic. It’s fair enough to say that neither side is willing to embrace the whole package; unless Mencius comes back and picks a side we’re going to keep on squabbling over who are his true followers. Regardless, we all agree on MM’s critiques of Democracy, bureaucracy, progressive morality, and the dominant institutions. […] I believe this dichotomy is fundamentally spiritual. NRx is a materialist ideology, post-Ancap in essence, it’s no surprise then that many Neoreactionaries started out as Marxists or Libertarians. Conversely, HRx places the metaphysical at the root of all civic affairs. With raw power politics also superseding catallaxy.

It’s not quibble proof, from the XS PoV, but it’s far closer to a cold, realistic assessment than anything we’ve seen yet. (It’s impossible for me to avoid observing, in passing, that the descent into spittle-flecked vulgarity seems to be a distinguishing characteristic of these ‘higher souls’. Is it too much to ask for just a little loftiness of tone from our political metaphysicians? Quite apart from anything else, it would actually work better.)

There are many other points of interest in the Froude Society piece. Worth noting in particular:

They reject the hero, they reject the sublime, and thus any exoteric link to the Holy on High. Moreover, they do not even pretend to have any solutions for non anglo-civilizations, we speak truths that ring true for all peoples by historical precedent, that good governance and order is always Good.

It wouldn’t surprise me, in the least, if the author of Unqualified Reservations would tilt more to the HRx camp today (although, rather weirdly, the Urbit innovator seems to have pushed even further into ‘protocol’ territory). There is certainly no assertion on our (Tech-Comm) side, that he would subscribe to the usage of his work that we find important. Nor do we, to any serious extent, care whether he would do so. Neocameral-Patchwork formalism, the theorization of fungible primary (sovereign) property, and Exit-oriented geopolitical disintegration is the commitment we have here — and without Moldbug none of that would have reached its present state of articulation. The Jacobitism, monarchist theater, objective Anglophobia, ahistorical contempt for emergent trustless governance systems, hyperbolic anti-modernism, and romantic humanism we can do without.

A great merit of the Froude Society piece is that it acknowledges the canonical Moldbug model of the NeoCam sovereign is a stockholder-controlled executive agent, and then — honestly — distances itself from this construction. In contradistinction from pretending that anything in UR can be seriously understood as a project to bring back the Old Kings.

Reaction splitting into “materialist” NRx and “spiritual” HRx will be yet another win for the mind-body split.

Objectivism is tragically ignored by the alt-right. It’s not simply a retro form of techno-commercialism. It’s something unusual: an atheistic, but spiritual philosophy. Specifically, it’s dualist. Objectivism holds that man is an integrated whole of mind and matter, of body and soul. As a material being he needs technology, industry and capitalism. As a spiritual being he needs art, romance and purpose.

Rand often sounds religious as she *is* attempting to bring religion down to earth, and give emotions like awe, worship and rapture a meaning in reality.

NRX is like nanotech AI taking over the internet and micro substructure and installing bitcoin generation machines onto human perception and micromanaging those. In a sense, it’s quite nice. It’s an interesting take which tends toward the microscopic. It’s quite realistic.

HRX is like a giant cylindrical mecha-phallus given power by the humans surrounding it. It’s got giant logos and theme music and it’s even got something like a face. It communicates back to the people surrounding it. It’s very much aesthetic and more or less unashamedly European.

I wonder if there is a central point between the two. Like, CRX. Centrist Reaction. I don’t want to pose this idea too much here. But I have been thinking about it a lot. I wrote a pretty terrible blog post on it a while ago called “New Centralism.” I wanted to give it a flashy name that people would remember – that wasn’t just “New Centrism.” But I realized, this idea of “Centrism” as a political philosophy is actually very interesting. Very powerful. It’s not widely understood. Centrist because, compared to HRX – NRX almost would appear to be “left wing.” However, to NRX, HRX tends to appear to be bigoted.

And not bigoted in the sense of “You aren’t going along with the liberal dogma” bigot. I just mean – bigoted. Like, in as close to a rational sense as I can put it. HRX tends to steamroll over distinctions. Nobody wants to admit it, but it does. It’s actually an unfortunately rare position I think, to see that. But also to realize the value in it – the full value in things like the European New Right for instance. It’s just that I also very much see the value in the notion of artificial intelligence and Austrian economics, and evolution of that type. So CRX could be considered whatever kind of conglomerate ideology manages to emerge from the fusion of those things. But at the same time almost being completely unique.

Obviously by its nature CRX can’t really refer to anything that has already happened – thus it would be defined by experimentation, randomness, and radicalism.

CRX might be able to find a commonality, a real commonality, between what appear to be the dreamlike fantasies of HRX and – in my opinion – the potential nightmares of NRX. CRX is the shrewd political approach. But actually it may also be aesthetic and cultural. Deconstructive. Maybe this is just my background growing up reading Deleuze and Badiou and all that exciting… stuff… and obviously being “liberal” – but I want to bring that exciting and almost deconstructive mentality to whatever the “right” wing is. That avant-garde approach to art, writing, music, film, and activity in general. It’s sorely missing from a lot of right wing groups. The “Alt Right” sometimes seems to show flashes of an interesting artistic awareness, but it usually dissipates into memes. Memes are funny but they have a limit to how “deep” they can get, it seems. Well, the limit is purely imposed.

For whatever reason many of the aesthetic experimentalists are or were on the left. I sometimes wish there was more of a “frontier” spirit to culture on the right. I actually can’t even talk to my old leftist friends anymore because as soon as they realized I wasn’t going along – they literally universally banned me from their lives. I might have great ideas but there is no area within which they can be posited. That’s how things are right now. And I’m not interested in going back.

I just sometimes wish – now that I spend so much time around more right wing people – that they had more of that experimental and radical spirit of just trying weird new stuff and saying “fuck it.” There are some sites that get closer, but certainly not the baseline level of cultural appreciation for sheer nonsense and absurdity. After all, such things are suspected to be “degenerate” or “modern” or whatever. The Platonic forms. I understand that. But part of CRX is kind of this idea, that there is always this risk of infiltration. Almost like if you view the human body as a biological entity, and the idea of a virus or disease. Yet also the idea of spiritual and bodily wellness and diet. Emotional well being.

In this sense CRX very clearly breaks away from right left dichotomy – but still aesthetically and almost intellectually stands with the sort of momentum of the right. Except I think it could be understood as sort of a sprouting and tendency toward upwards, as opposed to a “pull” to the left or right. It understands things as rational and obvious, and values creativity above everything, basically. Creativity not just intellectually, but also as a sort of wondrous potential of the human being and of human populations. It sees current regimes as wasting the possibilities of humans, and wasting the potential of what they are capable of. It doesn’t see society as a conglomerate merely of individuals, nor as a center for worship. It posits – I guess – the potential for a society which is more based on ideas than anything else.

At least that’s what I want it to be. Probably the most easy way of putting it is sort of the poetic and almost deconstructive and experimental aesthetic cultural side.

The weird thing is that liberals have this very serious monopoly on what we’d call “emotional wellness” or sort of like, moral well being. Morality. They appear to be the good guys, and they tell themselves that. When you “go-right” – no matter how rational or reasonable your views may in fact be, you tend to begin buying into their narrative. “I’m the bad guy now. There is something wrong with me.” And on and on. It’s everything. And that narrative, there is a way it takes over you. When you also know, really, is that true? I think a big thing is just taking that narrative away, and really looking at it. Really looking at the idea that right wing people are “bad” and left wing people are “good.” Because it’s there, and it’s very real. And I know that it just isn’t true, so why does it have so much power? Enough power to sometimes override people entirely. It’s false. Such myths must be obliterated.

Obviously I’m a bit insane but I take it with some pride, and try to proudly walk lines that don’t usually lens themselves over the well, Wall.

This strikes a deep chord with me. I, too, love that ‘wild aesthetic experimentation’, though I also got tired of how vainly repetitive it all was on the left.

I remember finally losing my patience after doing a month-long experiment to change the behavior of my group of experimentalists using subtle environmental cues. It turned out their stated principles actually had more to do with whether they woke up to a bad smell than any genuine rebellion. I started cleaning regularly and watched them mellow out, and that was my moment of radicalization to Order, since Chaos was so trivial. I reread Crime and Punishment with fresh eyes for contextual psychology and I was lost to liberalism ever after.

If there’s one thing that excites me most about NRx, and convinces me it has a chance, it’s that it does seem to have this wild experimental heart in a less shallow way. Moldbug’s an experimental poet, our host is an experimental horror writer, nydwracu’s writing was always very experimental, the list goes on… we have a crab cult of convergent evolution, which was one of the weirdest experiments I’ve seen: like a fad for the brutal irrelevance and determinism of fads, yet in a hopeful and jokey way. And I hope I am not incorrect to have thought I recognized a lot of NRx thoughts hiding among the Weird Suns, and I hope I’m not incorrect to think that many of our private offline lives are an interesting mix of the orthodox and unorthodox.

Wasn’t there a few who used to joke frequently that NRx was exactly ‘avant garde reaction’?

So I’m not at all worried that creativity doesn’t have a place in NRx, and for me, it’s already what appeals to me most about it. It seems to understand the artist correctly, as someone working in a context with inspirations and aspirations, who needs a careful mixture of stability and novelty, and it seems to understand art correctly, as a flowering of culture in the fertile, reproductive sense, not only the sterile decorative and representative senses.

And last, speaking for myself, I don’t feel like a bad guy at all and I don’t find that many of my leftist friends find themselves good. I feel like a trickster walking through dour halls of people hoodwinked by some great shadow. The shadow often tries to slip out of their mouths and into my ears, but I just think like the shadow for a moment, make the proper sad monkey expression, and then it mistakes me for one of its own and passes on. No trouble at all, and occasionally I get to steal myself a brother or a fair maiden from it; then we have each other to count on, too.

Conscience is best trained with myths, so feel free to tell yourself some new ones! The bad ones die best by letting them wither in happy forgetfulness.

For Froude Society to draw a clear distinction that it is not Land Brand® NRx is perfectly acceptable. What I object to is his (and, a fortiori, Reactionary Future’s) persistent advertised belief that the entirety of “authentic” NRx, from which they quite rightly distance themselves, is Land Brand® NRx. Chris B at any rate is certainly in a position to know better. Or at least was.

Anyone who cannot see the distinction between Hestia Brand® NRx and Land Brand® NRx, nor that his own positive advocacy is practically indistinguishable from that of the former, is either completely misinformed or insanely puritanical, and in any case unworthy to be joined.

Bracketing off the entire “free market”/”capitalism” discussion, in which I’m not even convinced we’re using words that have objective referents, it seems to me that the supposed cleavage comes down to algorithmic versus human governance. On that question Hestia is officially agnostic, but only because it doesn’t deem the question worthy of an “Official” pronouncement. Hestia is today crammed full of people who are operating on the assumption that the only realizable government will be human. In this matter, it seems Hestia is practically indistinguishible from HRx. Yet because Hestia has thus far refused to pronounce Official Anathemas upon Landian Algorithmic Government, HRx sees Hestia as indistinguishible from the Landian. Muh Insufficient Puritah. It’s a game. A lobbying game, and a rather anti-formalist one at that. It would not surprise me if Hestia refuses to play it.

If people don’t want join fine. If people want to do their own thing fine. But if your going to define your group as Being Against What Those Guys Stand For, well then you’d better have a pretty precise handle on what those guys stand for. And thus far HRx has only managed to wave hands in a rather vague direction about that.

Capitalism is more than accounting. The pertinent question is, how much control should the ‘state’ have over commerce? For Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, it’s very little. For traditionalists, it’s probably much more.

Perhaps, HRx (and most NRx) is about the ‘Great Man theory’, as exemplified by the excitement over Trump. But others are more incredulous . Government ‘waste’ and inefficiently is in and of itself a byproduct of politics and won’t be fixed by more politics, Also, man is fallible, prone to biases and irrationality, versus algorithms. Although if algorithms are created by man, wouldn’t that make algorithms fallible too?

Nathan Cook Reply:March 2nd, 2016 at 7:38 pm

I suspect the algorithm in Landian Algorithmic Government would bear the same relationship to a human as that human would to anything in these pages.

The equation of capitalism to double-entry accounting is designed specifically to STOP talking about capitalism as useless abstract concept and start talking about the who what where and how much of the control of commerce. Free markets are spherical cows in free space.

Most neoreactionaries, including the primordial one, think that flows capital are human decisions that serve human ends and needs. One would think that would align this hypothetical most of neoreactionaries with the stated aims of HRx. Unfortunately HRx takes this precise opportunity to strike an implausible pose and claim that NRx is utterly beholden to shekels. “How much more ‘growth’ do we need?” Only enough to not get eaten by the competitors at our gates!

So when NRx admits: economics, while subservient to human ends, is still important because otherwise yer dead–and you can’t ride the tiger when yer dead, HRx (I think sophistically) uses this as an opportunity to tar NRx: “Aha! You guys are only after shekels.” I, for one, am calling Bullshite.

I can swear though, in the past three years I have seen quite a few posts very similar to this one, some almost exactly like this one (albeit written with more style). I don’t know of a single person around these parts who would lump you and your views in the same category as Froude Society. I don’t even know of anyone who would lump you in the same category as Steves, or Hestia in general and claim that you share the same views. Actually, I think Froude Society is the only person who does this.

So…what is the point of this post? Beyond the obvious signalling, I mean.

I guess it was inevitable that the trichotomy would become a dichotomy. And a fairly stale one at that.

(And it should surprise no one that things split along precisely these lines — even Marxism has been perpetually divided down the middle between “anti-humanists” and romantic anti-capitalists (cf., Althusser v. Thompson)).

And speaking of analogues with the left, this split seems similar to the ethical/structural axis on this proposed classification of modern leftist positions. So basically, HRx would be the reactionary analog of SJWs on the left, they each believe in heroic morally righteous action to create a better tomorrow rather than cooly analyzing social/political systems and figuring out how best to change their dynamics to move in whatever direction they prefer.

People do frequently talk about justified suspicions so I don’t see that word as particularly non-neutral, although “solidarity” is pretty much always treated as a positive by leftists who use the word, so it probably would have been more neutral to label the other end “trust” since people do talk about misplaced trust (though they call the whole axis the ‘axis of trust’). But obviously “naivete” is always used as a negative so that wouldn’t be any more neutral. Anyway, I don’t think the article is trying to be particularly neutral about different types of leftism, it’s largely a polemic against SJW style online activism. I was just pointing to it because the “axis of agency” seems to parallel the difference between NRx and HRx.

Grotesque Body Reply:March 4th, 2016 at 1:06 pm

I know, and I found the article an interesting inside scoop on the state of the modern left (it’s intriguing, although not necessarily useful, to know that ressentiment now comes in many flavours).

Re my comment, I was just using the piece as a point from which to advance my own polemic, which is that Trust always amounts to Naivete.

There are certainly cases where lack of trust is naivete also, as when a kid fears a teacher who would have taught them something useful, or a teenager spurns someone who loves him because he can’t believe it’s real.

Equating lack of suspicion with naivete should be suspect.

Grotesque Body Reply:March 5th, 2016 at 4:45 am

‘Equating lack of suspicion with naivete should be suspect.’

…which brings us back to suspicion as the only means of evading naivete, even those forms of naivete that present themselves as eminently suspicious.

Not at all. Suspicion can be reflexive while also having limits of applicability.

Trust in the wise is often a better way to evade naivete than suspicion is.

Naivete is misjudging a situation yet thinking you judged it correctly. It can be just as naive to think you know to be suspicious when suspicion is unwarranted as it can be to think you can trust when trust is unwarranted. The only way one thinks suspicion is never naive is if one thinks suspicion is never maladaptive. Usually, this is believed by people who do not appreciate the efficiency costs of suspicion. They erroneously think they can maintain suspicion while acting just like someone without suspicion.

For a programmer, thinking unrestrained suspicion is costless is like thinking it is costless to use exception handling for every routine down to the lowest level (or inspect each with a debugger). It’s algorithmically nonsense: one would have to have exceptions for exceptions for exceptions to infinity (or debuggers for debuggers for debuggers). The logging code (debugging environment) would entirely eclipse the core function.

For a psychologist, it’s much more obvious suspicion has costs but less simple to explain to someone who doesn’t already see it. But think: can’t you usually tell when someone is suspicious? Aren’t they slower?

It is not energetically/informationally feasible to be globally and recursively suspicious all the time. One must focus one’s suspicions. It is naive not to.

Grotesque Body Reply:March 5th, 2016 at 5:56 am

The problem that you haven’t noticed is that the naive always think that they are focusing their suspicions in the right direction.

I guess it was inevitable that the trichotomy would become a dichotomy. And a fairly stale one at that.
(And it should surprise no one that things split along precisely these lines — even Marxism has been perpetually divided down the middle between “anti-humanists” and romantic anti-capitalists (cf., Althusser v. Thompson)).
[Reply]

Yup, as I wrote back in 2015. The establishment of the Hestia Society in early 2015 seems to have put the kibosh on the techno-faction. But also geopolitical events are playing a role, too, such as Trump, immigration, rape-fugees, and Islamic terrorism in France and California, putting race and nationalism on the forefront and pushing capitalism and commercialism to the periphery, whereas in 2013-2014 NRx was more focused on techno-monarchist succession, not immigration and nationalism. In fact, many of the earliest NRx thinkers were involved in the Silicon Valley techno-subculture, and since immigration plays an important role Silicon Valley tech economy, it’s expected that as the tides turn against immigration, techno-commercialism fall out of favor. Maybe the ‘old’ NRx was too self-centered, too enamored with technology and wealth and not about community.

I also don’t understand how techno-commercialism is compatible with ‘collapse’ and eschatological variants of NRx. Collapse would slow the progress of technology.

Yeah, I think this is right, it was inevitable that this would happen as the immigration issue got worse.

Though, in my opinion, I think that at this point, NRx doesn’t really have anything to offer the Europeans by way of a solution to their immigrant/immigration problem. Those who think that they’ll be able to peaceably repatriate their unassimilated immigrants, or else all of their non-white population, to their respective countries of origin is dreaming.

Continental Europe may well be headed towards some kind of race war, which, given how destructive it will inevitably be, will probably destroy Europe even more finally and irreversibly than anything else I can think of. I don’t know about England but, having recently visited, I think that it could survive if it definitively crushes its Muslim population in one fell swoop.

Where America is concerned, things are more manageable. The race problem in America isn’t so much whites v. non-whites as it is everyone v. blacks and illegal immigrants. Illegals can easily be deported in the span of maybe a month or so, and the blacks, well, I don’t know about them, but given that they’re such a small proportion of the population, I doubt that they present any long-term threat to the survival of the country. Some are assimilable and the rest will be dealt with eventually, one way or the other.

All of this is to say that I think for Americans should stick to NRx. God help the Europeans though. I don’t necessarily blame them if they decide to go full-on fascist, though I haven’t a doubt in my mind that that won’t help them in the least.

Correction: instead of “illegal immigrants”, I should have put “Central American peasants”. By this designation I don’t refer to all Hispanics, but readers will know what I mean. The illegals among them can be deported. Some can be paid to renounce their citizenship and leave. For the rest, intermarriage with white proles will be the solution. Mind you, I don’t advocate intermarriage, but that does appear to be what is happening in the southwest.

Each moderate the others, Tech-Comm by recalling that economics exists, Throne-Altar by recalling that values-aesthetics exist, Ethno-Nat by recalling that we are still mostly human. I am amused by the repitition of the three-fold structure, but for one side to claim sovereignty over the others seems meaningless.

As near as I can tell no one “spoke” on the trike is claiming sovereignty. The claim, by HRx Hystericists, is that so-called “Tech-Comm” has claimed sovereignty. That’s news to me. And I think hopefully to Admin. Tho’ this muddying of the waters, all in the ostensible task of clearing them, would seem to benefit both Admin and those who wish fervently to see him “purged”.

The very best thing I can say about is that it is not a very formalist way of doing things. If HRx wants a club, they should start… a club. And shut the hell up about how they’re not NRx. At least until they have a very precise idea of what they’re not.

The market is antecedent.
It provides what is demanded of it, as far as it is legal to do so. If metaphysics and theology are demanded, then it will provide theology and metaphysics.

This is why I don’t respect HRx. It wants to draw distinctions that aren’t there for social reasons. It is not a scholarly endeavour, but it wants to play one at parties.

If few or none demand metaphysics or theology, then staking out lofty perches will not change this fact. If metaphysics and theology are illegal, than failing to notice these laws will certainly not change them.

One could in theory seize the coercive apparatus and make it illegal not to supply these things. This has already been tried. The end result you see around you. Failing to notice this historical relationship is not constructive.

This is what makes you libertarian, I think: nothing is a free lunch, but the market, which is always a free lunch.

“It provides what is demanded of it, as far as it is legal to do so.”
Then law precedes market. The claim made by HRx is metaphysics precedes law. I don’t agree with the HRxers, but you can at least accurately engage with the claims of your enemies, unless you are so weak as to resort to mischaracterizing them.

Broken window fallacy. The market can and has provided its own law many times in the past. For instance, the best law-work in the entire world, English common law, was originally a free-market construct. Lighthouses started off private too, but were nationalized.

I agree with a weak version of that statement, but don’t know enough about law or economics to evaluate a stronger claim. There was Spandrell’s post about the story of that dude with the hunting hawk that was a parable against market-trading fundamentalism, so I figured the strong claim was considered contestable in NRx circles. I just want to nail down what people think.

Grotesque Body Reply:March 2nd, 2016 at 11:57 pm

“Then law precedes market. The claim made by HRx is metaphysics precedes law.”

Social theory is complicated. Blanket claims of the form “X precedes Y” are full retard.

As far as I can tell, they ought to reverse this “Anglo vs. Teutonic” nonsense and simply call themselves “Neo-Victorians.” With Froude, Carlyle, Disraeli, “imperialism apologia,” their style/aesthetic, Jacobitism, the fact that they’re writing in English to an Anglo audience, and so forth, they appear wholly Anglo-traditionalist to me.

This is tangential, but I’m working (with a great deal of professional assistance) on a translation of Mishima’s heretofore untranslated political writings. (I’ll serialize the document online when done — which should be soon.) Mishima makes a point of saying that the Japanese reactionary right “are the [only] people who embody Japanese aesthetic traditions. “ I think it’s fair to say that HRx and movements like it embody the aesthetic traditions of the West.

Ahote Reply:March 3rd, 2016 at 9:29 am

@Erebus

What’s interesting is their hostility toward capitalism, and friendliness toward fascism. What’s even more interesting is Russian reaction’s friendliness toward capitalism, and hostility toward fascism. It seems that reaction tends to be defined by what it is reacting against. Carlyle reacted against the British liberalism, Ilyin reacted against Bolshevism.

Erebus Reply:March 3rd, 2016 at 1:19 pm

Right. But they claim to be Carlyle-worshippers, and their hostility to naked capitalism is simply modeled after Carlyle’s own, isn’t it? Carlyle was openly hostile to laissez faire economic principles, as Past and Present makes clear. Here’s a very small and partial sampling for those unfamiliar:

“True, it must be owned, we for the present, with our Mammon-Gospel, have come to strange conclusions. We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named ‘fair competition’ and so forth, it is a mutual hostility. We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings; we think, nothing doubting, that it absolves and liquidates all engagements of man. “My starving workers?” answers the rich Mill-owner: “Did not I hire them fairly in the market? Did I not pay them, to the last sixpence, the sum covenanted for? What have I to do with them more?”–Verily Mammon-worship is a melancholy creed. When Cain, for his own behoof, had killed Abel, and was questioned, “Where is thy brother” he too made answer, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Did I not pay my brother his wages, the thing he had merited from me?”

Exhorting the aristocracy to fulfill their duty, namely to provide: “True government and guidance; not no government and laissez faire; much less misgovernment and corn laws!”

And then there’s the famous seven-foot hat: “Consider, for example, that great Hat seven-feet high, which now perambulates London Streets; which my Friend Sauerteig regarded justly as one of our English notabilities; “the topmost point as yet,” said he, “would it were your culminating and returning point, to which English Puffery has been observed to reach!”–The Hatter in the Strand of London, instead of making better felt hats than another, mounts a huge lath-and-plaster Hat, seven-feet high, upon wheels; sends a man to drive it through the streets; hoping to be saved thereby. He has not attempted to make better hats, as he was appointed by the Universe to do, and as with this ingenuity of his he could very probably have done; but his whole industry is turned to persuade us that he has made such! He too knows that the Quack has become God.”

My point is that their thought appears to be precisely along the same lines as Carlyle’s own, and does not quite seem to be fascist. (…Of course, Fascism and Carlylian thought are not entirely dissimilar….) When you get right down to it, they simply seek a framework which establishes the primacy of the ruling class over the market. Nobles before merchants, etc.

…I don’t think that anything they’ve said would be out of place in an English gentleman’s smoking room circa 1890. They’re neo-Victorians. They really should drop the “continental”/”Teutonic” pretension like a hot potato — it’s laughable. Besides that, their position is an admirable one with very deep roots in pure, unalloyed Western culture.

Ahote Reply:March 3rd, 2016 at 3:17 pm

@Erebus

Ruling class de facto has power over the market. Point is that when ruling class chooses to use that power it is almost always a sure sign of corruption, and an example of bad governance (while cronyism obviously benefits the cronies, it is bad for everyone else, and thus the country). However, they don’t want just mercantilism… if I understand it correctly, they also want enserfment of the entire population, coupled with imposition of autarky and archeofuturism (ban on automation).

Land vs Hestia differs on praxis, Land brand is purely theory without praxis (since it relies purely on catallaxy) while Hestia is working on including NRx praxis (it might style itself as being a part of that catallaxy). Land is to Hestia as Schopenhauer is to Nietzsche.

Something fundamental to NRx is that Gnon trumps everyone else’s telos on pain of death/extinction. The biggest fools underestimate Gnon’s reach thinking they can escape the red queen’s race, though the counter argument is that under Gnon you’re going to die and go extinct anyway so live it up. However that’s a fool’s hedonism. Transcendent aims (pursuit of higher order, deeper truth, greater mind) are not mutually exclusive with Gnon (something HRx refuses to accept since the bathwater of concrete form is their baby, and hence why HRx is actually stagnant like the old Middle Kingdom rather than transcendent) and are best pursued in harmony with Gnon.

“fungible primary (sovereign) property” Using the word fungible seems overly ambitious, the value of a single share is very different to someone who has exactly 50% of the shares vs having 51% (at which point the power value of the remaining 49% of the shares is exactly zero). Unless the aim is to be like bitcoin where someone having 51% of the processing power is a failure mode.

Algorithm vs judgement, organic process vs synthetic process. Traditions are an organic algorithm, sometimes adaptations from after selection pressure. If one thinks of the ability to effectively discriminate as a form of intelligence then selection pressure over long enough time can rival a man’s intelligence. More intelligence, better decision making. Even the best algorithms written by men only contain a tiny fraction of their intelligence, however the best algorithms are organically composed of relationships between men enabling their combined best judgement to make decisions about things like price setting.

Centralized and distributed decision making aren’t mutually exclusive, they can be stacked in layers on top of each other as we see in nature, hierarchical networked hierarchies of networks.

They live in a goldfish bowl. I know. I was there. The darkness … it obscures the curvature of the glass. Banging their head upon it does little to reveal its presence (no matter the frequency). It’s like fish have no feelings.

Admin, as our Schopenhauer, could you suggest some music to ease the pain?

For all of theclaims about its anti-capitalist aspirations, vaporwave looks and sounds like music for techno-commericialists nostalgic for the dot-com boom. The resentment towards capitalism I see in the genre is more a resentment towards the ’90s failing to deliver on the ’80s’ promise of a “dark and oppressive” (but exciting and meaningful-feeling for its challenging of humanist ideals) Japanese-flavored cyberpunk future. If it is popular among college Marxists, it’s because it allows them to enjoy hypercapitalist imagery but claim that they are doing so “ironically”.

What MM may not have clearly articulated, but which is intrinsic to NRx, is that any system which confers status without restrictions is dangerous. HRx is the acquisition of status through risk/risk posturing; wage war on the cathedral, speak heresy to power. This will end badly, as each new HRx seeks to distinguish himself by pushing the envelope. There is no status is NRx, which is what allows it to investigate truth without getting hung up on dogma.

even faster, its on the way already. context-free languages (CFL) replasing context-sensitive grammar or what ever fits better into model of continuous reciprocal causation (CRC). just to be able to undestand and reflect on something is not a cognitive enough. departing from multiple point sumultaneously and plunging into realties of CRC, that is really sporty.

This may be a good time once again to think about what an NRx (i.e., non-HRx) religion might look like, whether adopted or built from scratch. Superficially, the NRx discourse has certainly already mentioned/produced plenty of deities. Profoundly, it may have created the stem cells of an aesthetic. A good core aesthetic is necessary, if not sufficient, for a religion to take hold. It would direct its autonomous development in human minds better than any set of explicit rules would.

Material related to designing a religion is not as scarce as it might seem (there is plenty to learn from Yudkowsky’s fun theory alone, which is far more than its name suggests) but it isn’t aggregated anywhere under that label. Nyan used to write about designing a tech-comm, post-rationalist religion, however, that thread hardly had the time to develop before his blogicide.

Aside: I had never heard of “Fun Theory” before — but, reading that link, I realized that it’s something foreshadowed by Schopenhauer. (Who is, hopefully, becoming a popular man around these parts. It’s well justified.)

“Life presents itself as a task, the task, that is, of subsisting de gagner sa vie [to make a living]. If this is solved, then that which has been won becomes a burden, and involves the second task of its being got rid of in order to ward off boredom, which, like a bird of prey, is ready to fall upon any life that is secure from want.

“So that the first task is to win something, and the second, after the something has been won, to forget about it, otherwise it becomes a burden.

“That human life must be a kind of mistake is sufficiently clear from the fact that man is a compound of needs, which are difficult to satisfy; moreover, if they are satisfied, all he is granted is a state of painlessness, in which he can only give himself up to boredom. This is a precise proof that existence in itself has no value, since boredom is merely the feeling of the emptiness of life. If, for instance, life, the longing for which constitutes our very being, had in itself any positive and real value, boredom could not exist; mere existence in itself would supply us with everything, and therefore satisfy us. But our existence would not be a joyous thing unless we were striving after something; distance and obstacles to be overcome then represent our aim as something that would satisfy us…”

if NRx (whatever flavour) will go into real politics, question is … who will be eaten for breakfast and who for lunch. Land has a fundamentals, advantage of having it – you know where bottom going to be, prior everybody esle. still it does not guarantee from having few sceletons in the closet, due to technicalities changing in fast pace. Just matter of changing names sometimes like Algorithmic Goverment on Automata Government. Trusting humans to design algorithms, not sure about that.

This whole comment section has AIDS. I don’t think anyone has bothered to engage Moldbug, but has instead pattern matched their own biases onto the whole thing. If you think Moldbug was advocating Libertarianism, or weaponised exit of any sort, then you need to go back and read it, then come back to me and point it out. Good luck with that.
The whole, very coherent point of UR was to explore a rejection of imperium in imperio, yet because he had a discussion with Szabo in which Szabo rejects this, somehow that means Moldbug is inspiring avocation of Imperium in imperio (?!?)
I mean, this is a guy so opposed to imperium in imperio that he considered common law a medeival abuse. The reversion back to sov corp as a get out clause or something is funny as well, as this is put forward in patchwork as a example of an organisation that does not suffer the solecism of imperium in imperio. The marketing department can’t tell the director to go away and then do as they please. As for the Hestia guys apparently being agnostic on protocol governance is wise?, I can only observe that this demonstrates not wisdom, but a lack of understanding of what the issue is. This is a binary issue, you can’t have your cake and eat it.

As for claims of lowering the tone, I can only repeat the french witticism – “Cet animal est très méchant,
Quand on l’attaque il se défend.” You’ve been engaging in name calling from the start (Hrx? give me a break.)

and this – “The Jacobitism, monarchist theater, objective Anglophobia, ahistorical contempt for emergent trustless governance systems, hyperbolic anti-modernism, and romantic humanism we can do without.” Point out one time I have misrepresented your positions, or the positions of anyone who I considered has made mistakes. You regularly disregard arguments and instead fall back on misrepresentation, baseless rhetoric and marketing.

How are you planning to implement a governmental entity which is constrained only by its own imperative? Do you happen to have immortal god-emperors and armies of (to them) absolutely loyal terminators just lying around?

Fnargl is a loathsome Whig, and rules a retarded libertarian government… god-emperor on the other hand, he enslaves the entire population of Earth and micromanages the lives of his subjects – because micromanaging the lives of your subjects is the only true reactionary™ governance.

@Chris B Either the sovereign is sovereign, or he is not. The concept was accepted as a solecism for pretty much the entirety of human existence until the modern era and the engagement of republicanism and the concept of constraining power. Its roots are in the feudal system. The idea that you need to force the concept of rejection of Imperium in Imperio on society with an army of “terminators” betrays your liberal conception of humans. In your mind, as it is is in all Liberals, there is a clear conception of everyone being some hero super individual ala Ayn Rand, all ready to scream “Liberty or death!” That anthropology needs dragging out into daylight and examining. It is pure Whig bullshit.

Funny that you claim that when in fact exactly the opposite is true. Loyalty to the sovereign is very much the modern phenomenon (as is the modern concept of the state). Especially in the “feudal” age, everyone was perpetually on the lookout for the opportunity to back-stab their sovereign (and not just the sovereign)… or do you think that pax et treuga was just for giggles?

Who denies that the Sovereign is the Sovereign? Who? Does even Admin deny this? (Aside from your tempting him to do so.)

Who denies that a piece of paper, or an algorithm, or an idea can not check the Sovereign? Who? (Tho’ it may if he chooses it to.)

Yet I think we should all agree that a sovereign may not repeal the laws of physics. Further we should agree that a sovereign so incompetent to try, should find his sovereignty surrendered to another, more competent one, and himself swinging at the end of a rope.

A sovereign may fervently wish that consenting adults not commit sodomitic acts behind closed doors or not grow herbal plants in basements. But he’s gonna have a hard time preventing those things from happening. Certainly a wise sovereign may opt not to take the draconian measures necessary from stopping them, lest he waste the respect he has gained in the eyes of his people on a foolish errand. Respect, which, tho’ not strictly necessary, nevertheless makes his government cheaper to implement.

Does pointing out the existence of limits to sovereignty make one a libertarian? Or Libertarian? Does it constitute an unacceptable defect in the purity of one’s commitment to Absolute Sovereignty?

@nickbsteves now you are just grasping at straws. I would be careful going into the “reality binds us” territory because it is a determinist trap. The aim is not to serioualy debate the issue, but instead to force a Calvinist/Spinosan frame on the thing via rhetoric.
The argument of the sovereign being unable to bind people through ethics is absurd and demonstrates Liberal anthropology. It only took a couple of episodes of “Will and Grace” and the threat of legal action to convert society en masse to gay marriage.
And constitutionalists and algorithmist deny the sovereign. Liberalism is premised on it.

@reactionaryfuture: I would have thought you would be more averse than most toward the use of Public Relations to impose the sovereign’s will upon the people. A sovereign who does that has divided his sovereignty with Magicians. Unless he himself is already a Magician.

People by and large do as they are told, and act in accordance with role models provided for them. That’s what humans do. That understanding offends the sensibilities of liberal political “thinkers” so it is not allowed into theory. It sneaks back in when it comes to the coal face of implementing the theory which has denied it, hence full spectrum pushing of liberalism.

Well, if you think I’m trying to carve out a toe hold for liberalism, then that’s just crazy.

Obviously I’d prefer a sovereign who was prudent and didn’t try to fundamentally change the character of the nation he was appointed (by some fate) to rule over. None of which should be taken to mean that I think a piece of paper, or my own preferences, can check the power of the sovereign. I think you’ll find people will do what they’re told a lot more cheaply if those commands comport with their inherited folkways. Pulling them away from those requires more dark magic, and the like ceding of power to Wormtongue.

Similarly, it is uncontested (and uncontestable) that a Sovereign only has finite resources, which must be spent in such a way as to guarantee his long reign (i.e., remaining sovereign). It is certainly within the realm of possibility (and history) that a sovereign who wastes too many resources… say… on keeping people from growing banned plants in their basements, may find himself resource short against a superior sovereign who wants to eat him for breakfast. Again, none of this is intended to create a safe square millimeter for liberalism. Nor does it.

There is, I think we may agree, an art to sovereignty. It is natural that political theory would from time to time address that art.

The idea that owners should ideally not be residents smells fishy. This is not how normal states work. Yes, a sovereign space hotel, meant for impermanent residence and a wide variety of services, so a place without attachment, without identity, without real community, identity and emotional loyalty, so a residence for autists can work like that perfectly. See Heinlein – The Cat Who Walked Through Walls.

But there is an entirely different and historically far more prominent way of state-formation. There are tribes, practically extended families, connected by relatedness and thus emotional attachment. To each other, and to their land. They form a mutual defense alliance. Or one tribe conquers the others. The core problem is the same as what NeoCam tries to solve: no conflict of interest, no friction, no competition for power. The classic state solves it by first and foremost emotional attachment, strongly influencing culture, the state cult, the Theologia Civilis towards the common identity, we are one folk we do what is good for us. For this reason it is useful if the state is strongly monoethnic – altrightish it may sound, still thinking as a “we” prevents much of friction. Nevertheless sovereignty still flows from above and thus they need a singular king, but this king will not see the state as a family business, but as the organic representer of the people. Read Voegelin here: when the Goths in Hispania did not do much (no war etc.) they did not need a king, when they started doing stuff they erected a king. Or all the organic Medieval models of kingship, Sir John Fortescue etc. So the king has not a business to exploit but a country and people to serve, how to ensure he serves it well? Ensure it from the fact that humans crave prestige, they want to go to the history books as Mr. Awesome. Furthermore you can pull a classic feudal double watch: if any baron tries to put his own interest above the common interest, the king is strong enough to defeat him, if the king does it, all the barons together are strong enough to stop him. This is not sci fi, this is how it used to be.

I have no doubt that that a NeoCam space hotel would be awesome for highly functional autists who would start a hundred Googles there and bring on the singularity. But for the rest of us Normies with our Normie emotional furniture the old models are more compatible. We cannot really function without emotional attachment.

[Land said]{ descent into spittle-flecked vulgarity seems to be a distinguishing characteristic of these ‘higher souls’ }
this is a documented phenomenon. M. Anissimov comes to mind. but as someone who´s been involved with HRx (before it got its name) for ca. 15 years, i have many experiences with the sort, from different places. i think it might be most succinctly summarized (excluding even more briefly ‘loserism’) in Ernst Junger´s saying: “there are always demons around fallen altars.”

simply said, ‘Historical rejects’, since their causes have lost battles, even century after century, even World Wars, the worse of them tend to be extremely sore.

the better of them however, are, genial.

examples are the Spanish losing their masculinity and degeneration into machismo after losing their armada, and not having yet recovered.

or neo-Feudalists or Catho-plebes not having recovered from a Jew, Disraeli, becoming the prime minister of the greatest empire. (greatest in size anyway.)

Fascism was an ersatz imperialism of this historical-reject sort. pseudoroman.

emotionally disturbed people may put on a face of Order (and even manage that for decades, while ultimately) leading all in a downwards spiral to chaos.

not that i have anything against the man. perhaps it was unworthy of me to mention it. he certainly has been more, as it were, measurably productive than myself.
i did not however like how he presented Evola´s ideas.
the latter´s most Modern werk is «Ride the Tiger»
and 99% of what is written about it by who
ever is purely offensive. vulgarized.
riding the tiger, as E. meant it,
is the “opposite” of HRx.
and even more the
opposite of
‘Fascism’?
noncliché.
anticliché.
acliché.
o.g.
o.s.
★

Evola suggested at least as early as 1927 an acceleratio.
that was in «Revolt Against the Modern World».
this is the nec plus ultra of new regal action.

i don´t know why i´d promote it tho.
i hate work myself. i´m a leisure
aristo-brat. a philo-sopher.
meaning i love wisdom.
i don´t like to manage
my accounts. $$$.
but i sure as hell
have ridden
the tiger.
#LHP
<3